Scanty information about Plato's life

Of Plato's biography we can furnish nothing better than a faint outline. We are not fortunate enough to possess the work on Plato's life, composed by his companion and disciple Xenokrates, like the life of Plotinus by Porphyry, or that of Proklus by Marinus. Though Plato lived eighty years, enjoying extensive celebrity—and though Diogenes Laertius employed peculiar care in collecting information about him—yet the number of facts recounted is very small, and of those facts a considerable proportion is poorly attested.

His birth, parentage, and early education

Plato was born at Ægina (in which island his father enjoyed an estate as klerucn or out-settled citizen) in the month Thargelion (May) of the year B.C. 427. His family, belonging to the Dême Kollytus, was both ancient and noble, in the sense attached to that word at Athens. He was son of Ariston (or, according to some admirers, of the God Apollo) and Periktionê: his maternal ancestors had been intimate friends or relatives of the lawgiver Solon, while his father belonged to a Gens tracing its descent from Kodrus, and even from the God Poseidon. He was also nearly related to Charmides and to Kritias—this last the well-known and violent leader among the oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants. Plato was first called Aristoklês, after his grandfather; but received when he grew up the name of Plato—on account of the breadth (we are told) either of his forehead or of his shoulders.